


Create Water

by Juniper200



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Domesticity, Gen, Mundane Magic, Quarter Elves, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-07
Updated: 2017-12-07
Packaged: 2019-02-11 18:59:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12941637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Juniper200/pseuds/Juniper200
Summary: 1st-level transmutationCasting Time:1 actionRange:30 ftYou create up to 10 gallons of clean water within range in an open container.





	Create Water

The day starts before the sun rises. There’s no getting around that. The only question is where I’ll be sent. I report to Cook in the kitchens. She has a pump, though, so unless it’s winter and there’s ice in the pipes, I’m off to the family wing to see Sariel, the head housekeeper. 

Sariel, she scared me a little when I was young and just taking over the duties from mam. She’s tall and haughty, and she wears spectacles -- not round like Lord Percival’s, but rectangular, and perched on the end of the end her long nose so she can stare down over the rims at the likes of me. I think she thinks herself as grand as Lady Cassandra or Lady Vex’ahlia with all the time she spends with the family. 

But she’s not part of the family. And she’s not the one who can call the water. 

In the morning, under Sariel’s baleful glare, it’s enough to cast the spell once. The maids and nurses curtsey before they dip the washstand basins in the big stone sink in the upstairs scullery and hurry back down the hallways to the family’s bedchambers. 

I yawn. Dawn is beautiful, with the sun slanting through the mountains and into the big windows at the end of the hall, but magic is a trial first thing in the morning.

“A little respect would not go amiss,” sniffs Sariel.

“Ma’am,” I say, stifling another yawn and bobbing something like a curtsey before I dry my hands on my apron and take my leave. I’m not afraid of Sariel, not since I grew old enough to realize how much the house needed someone who could do what I do, but the other servants follow her lead; she could make things uncomfortable for me. 

I’m halfway down the back stairs when the door above me slams open again. I flatten myself against the wall to keep from being bowled over by two small, dark figures. Lady Johanna and Young Lord Percival, the twins who make up the middle of Lord Percival and Lady Vex’ahlia’s brood, come crashing down the stairs toward the kitchens. 

“Freddie!” shouts Lady Johanna. “Give him back!” Young Lord Percival, I see, has a puppy clutched to his chest, its whining almost drowned out by the sound of their shoes on the stairs and Lady Johanna’s cries. Young Lord Percival is too young or too careless -- or too much of both -- to hold the poor thing properly, and it’s not far from wriggling out of his arms and plopping gracelessly down the steps. 

I want to take the puppy away, or at least show the young lord and lady how to support the dog’s hindquarters so it won’t slip from their grasp. But before I can make up my mind to step in their way, their breathless nurse braces herself in the doorway. 

“Come back to breakfast this instant!” she calls. A few stairs above me, the children stop and share a wordless look, then take off down the stairs again twice as fast. Sure enough, the puppy falls with a yelp. I scoop him up from their wake before the nurse tramples him. 

“Some help you are,” she huffs as she passes. I shrug and head back up the stairs to put the puppy in the nursery. My job in the morning is to fill the sink in the upstairs scullery, and hers is to keep noble children off the servants’ stairs. The scullery sink is full, so at least one of us is getting her work done. 

I’m surprised at the top of the stairs when I nearly bump into Lord Percival. Sariel, three steps behind him, clucks her disapproval. 

“Has the traveling circus passed by, then?” He sounds amused, but my mam taught me that it rarely pays for the lord of the manor to have reason to take notice of someone like me. 

“Yes, m’lord,” I say, dipping into a proper curtsey this time. It’s harder than you’d think with a puppy squirming in your arms.

“And here’s the cause of all the trouble,” he says, taking the dog from me and scratching it behind the ears. I look at my shoes. “If Freddie and Johanna would only learn to behave, I’d give them each a pup from this litter. But there’s not much chance of that, is there?”

What am I to say to that? “No, m’lord?” I venture. 

He laughs. “Sariel, remind the twins’ nurse that they’re not to leave the nursery until after breakfast. I’d say to keep them off the servants’ staircase and on the main thoroughfares, but that never worked when I was a boy. It’s not going to start now.” 

“Yes, my lord.” Sariel makes it sound officious and familiar at the same time. I don’t know how.

“And see that that this one makes it back to the kennels,” Lord Percival says, dumping the puppy back in my arms. There’s hair on his coat; I’ve heard his valet in the servants’ hall bemoaning the lord’s carelessness, and there will be an encore performance today. I curtsey again, but he’s already turned back toward his dressing room. Sariel shoos me away and follows. 

I’m of an age with Lady Cassandra, so I don’t much remember the house under old Lord Frederick -- my mam was in charge of the water then. She says he was distant and stern and never concerned himself much with the running of the castle or the doings of his family. I wonder what he would have thought of Lord Percival, who dotes on his children and manages to have dog hair on his coat before breakfast. 

\-----

There’s an old dovecote in the gables of the east wing. In the bad times, when the dark lady and her lord ruled Whitestone, there wasn’t much call for pigeons to come and go with messages, and the birds all died of old age or fell to the servants’ taste for squab. The dovecote fell into disrepair, and the next time anyone thought to look up there -- this was years later, after Lord Percival came home and the business with the nasty new god was done -- it had been thoroughly colonized by ravens. 

Ravens are dear to Lady Vex’ahlia for some reason; I don’t know why. So instead of evicting them, we treat them as honored guests. Which is why I’m climbing the steep, ladder-like stairs to the dovecote in the afternoon -- it’s too high for the pageboys to carry buckets of water for the ravens to drink, but not too high to send me to create water from nothing so the filthy creatures don’t go thirsty. 

Why they can’t just fly down to the pond in the garden is beyond me. I do as I’m told.

As I round the last turn in the staircase, I pause. The door at the top stands open, and I can hear a person’s voice among the ravens’ croaking.

“--wouldn’t be right at all. I told him to double patrols in the western Parchwood until the damned mess is straightened out, but doubtless Trinket and I will have to strike out and handle it ourselves if it isn’t resolved soon.”

Trinket is Lady Vex’ahlia’s special pet, a great big bear with brown fur and a graying snout. He has claws as long as my hand and teeth like the daggers in the Pale Guards’ belts, but the smaller children in the family ride him around the courtyard when they tire of their ponies. 

Only Lady Vex’ahlia would presume to speak of riding into the Parchwood with Trinket by her side, even to a flock of ravens. What is she doing in the old dovecote?

“Anyway. The children are driving me crazy, as usual. But a good crazy. Elaina grew into a young woman when I wasn’t looking. The twins…” I hear her sigh, and then laugh. “The twins are a force of nature as usual, just as we must have been at that age. Last week we lost track of Vesper, and it was almost an hour before Johanna confessed that she and Freddie had stashed her in one of the crypts to “rescue” while they played at being adventurers and couldn’t get her out again.” 

I remember this. There was talk that I might have to flood the tomb and float her out, but the idea was nixed for fear the child might drown. I think another druid, one who works stone, was brought from the quarries to melt the wall away. 

“I’m amazed every day at how mother managed. She didn’t have servants to keep us in line. But then there was no castle for us to wreck, just the little house in Byroden and the woods outside our door. I’m happy, so happy, with Percy and the children and all this. But I miss mother. I miss you. Most of all I miss you.” 

I hear sniffling, which I wish I could blame on all the dust and feathers up here. I’m baffled by the idea of Lady Vex’ahlia talking to herself and crying on the roof of the east wing. I stay frozen in place, wondering if I should go back downstairs and tell Sariel the wind was too strong for me to venture out to the dovecote this time. But before I can make up my mind, Lady Vex’ahlia appears in the doorway, drying her eyes on the sleeve of her gown. 

Our eyes meet for an instant before I remember to look away. “Hello,” she says quietly, in a tone more reserved than the one she took when speaking to the ravens.

“M’lady,” I say. There’s nothing else for me to say.

“I didn’t expect to see anyone else up here. It’s very...remote.”

“Yes, m’lady. I’ve come to cast the water spell for the ravens, m’lady.”

I hear a smile in her voice. “You must think me mad, talking to birds.”

“No, m’lady.” I do think her a little mad, but it’s not my place to say.

“Well,” she says. “Thank you for caring for the ravens. Carry on.” She squeezes past me on the narrow stairs. Her gown is silk, and it brushes roughly against the linsey-woolsey of my dress. She smells like the woods around the castle, cedar and juniper. 

I continue up the stairs and out into the sun, where the ravens greet me with a raucous chorus. You would think no one ever visits them, the way they croak and peck at my ankles. Awful birds.

Mam sometimes tells me about the first Lady Johanna, who she says was beautiful like an ice statue at Winter’s Crest and about as warm. I wonder what she would have thought of Lady Vex’ahlia, who can have a long conversation with anyone, it seems, even a bird, and thanks the servants for taking water to the ravens.

\-----

It’s summer when mam dies. 

There are visitors from far away in the castle, and everyone is too busy to take a second look at my eyes still swollen from crying myself to sleep the night before. The nurses and maids line up in the upstairs scullery with their basins, and I stand in front of the big stone sink. I concentrate, and the water that usually appears so easily...doesn’t come. 

“Come on,” hisses Sariel. 

I try again, and nothing happens. 

“We will wait here,” Sariel says coldly, “until you can perform your duties. As is expected of all of us.”

I try again, and again. My shoulders shake with effort, but nothing happens. 

There’s a voice in the hall. “-what the matter is, Vex.” A woman with auburn hair and a strange, antlered headdress pokes her head through the open scullery door. “Hello? Yes? The baby’s gotten into the blackberry jam from the breakfast tray and Vex could use some water to-” 

She breaks off when she sees me gesture helplessly over the stone sink again. “Ok,” she says, taking in my red eyes and Sariel’s scowl. “Ok. Let’s just...first things first. I’ve got this.” She gently moves me aside and does the magic to fill the sink with water herself. She’s not used to this every morning like I am, and she fills it right to the brim -- a little slops on the floor when the first of the ladies’ maids scoops her basin in. Sariel will probably find a way to blame me for that, too.

“I apologize, my lady Keyleth,” Sariel says. “Guests in this house generally are not expected to fetch their own water. But we live in extraordinary times.” Her tone cuts like a knife. I stand mutely and twist my apron through my fingers as the maids and nurses file out. Magic is thin on the ground in Whitestone, but not so rare that another druid can’t be found to call the water for the castle. This position was my mam’s, and her mam’s before her, and I’m sure I’ve lost it. 

“What,” the lady says, “that? Oh, that’s nothing. Uh, Sariel? It’s Sariel, right? Could you give us a minute?” Sariel looks equal parts shocked and confused that Lord Percival and Lady Vex’ahlia’s visitor wants to hang about in the upstairs scullery, but she knows her place, same as I do. She leaves. 

“Wow, what a bitch,” Lady Keyleth says, closing the door. Now,” and she takes me by the shoulders, “what’s the matter?”

I shouldn’t say anything. My troubles aren’t for the family or their guests. But I’m heartsick, and I’ve lost my position anyway. It all comes pouring out of me, along with the tears I’ve been holding back. 

Lady Keyleth gathers me up in her arms. It’s awkward -- she’s all bony where mam was soft, but she means well. “There, there. You’ve lost your mother, poor thing. I can’t believe Vex and Percy would ask you to work on a day like this.”

“I’m sure they don’t know, m’lady,” I hiccough through my tears. “Sariel wouldn’t have told them.” 

“Just a bitch, that one. Look, it’s going to be okay. Vex and Percy aren’t going to let Sariel fire you because you’re sad the day after your mother died.” 

“I don’t want to burden the lord and lady with my troubles, m’lady.”

“I think you’re underestimating your employers. They’re very understanding people.” 

I sniff. “Maybe so. But it’s not my place.”

She looks around the upstairs scullery. “Speaking of your place, is all you do...water?”

I nod. “Yes, m’lady. It’s what my mam taught me. For the washstands in the mornings and the baths in the evenings and for the ravens in the eaves. And Philip Gardner can’t carry buckets up the stairs for the window boxes like he used to, so I make it for him on the third floor every other day. The upstairs halls need scrubbing twice a week, so I’m needed there. Anywhere the castle wants water that’s too far from the well to carry, I go.”

Lady Keyleth looks a little ill. “You know...do you know who I am?”

“Yes, m’lady. You’re the druid princess from the south.”

“I’m not a- that’s not the point. The point is, I’m a druid, yes. And I could teach you to do other things besides creating water. There’s so much more! Fireballs! I bet you’d like fireballs after so much water! And there are other things -- I could teach you to change you shape, turn into elementals or animals, a bird even! Wouldn’t you like that?”

I think about going out to the old dovecote and casting away my human shape, gliding away from the castle on unfamiliar wings. Gliding away from the upstairs scullery, from Sariel, from the acres of stone hallway that need water for scrubbing, from Lady Vex’ahlia, from Lord Percival, from the family, from everything I’ve ever known, everything my mam ever knew, and her mam before her. 

I shake my head. 

“The castle needs water, m’lady. If it’s as you say and the lord and lady won’t send me away for what’s happened today, I’ll need to stay. Mam would want that.”

She sighs. “Whitestone gets into people in a way I don’t think I’ll ever understand. But okay. You take the rest of the day to rest. I’ll talk to Vex. Things will be fine.”

“Thank you, m’lady.”

She smiles and pats me on the arm like she’s not sure if she’s supposed to hug me again. I’m glad she doesn’t. 

I make my way to my little garret room, and curl up on the bed. It’s just past dawn, but I feel like I could go back to sleep for days. I know I’m not done crying, but something in me feels settled, like a question I didn’t know I was asking has been answered.

**Author's Note:**

> I just wanted Percy to be happy. If that meant a scene with a puppy, well, so be it.
> 
> Join me on [tumblr](http://junietwohundred.tumblr.com) and [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/juniper200).


End file.
